No Real Moves With No Real Data To Guide Don’t anticipate any real moves in this market until we get beyond this week’s release of central bank policy announcements, OPEC’s bi-annual meeting and the U.S. non-farm payrolls report. When the market doesn’t know what to do, one can usually rely on the VIX, our fear […]

All Quiet On The Equity Front Retailers, Home Depot (HD) and Walmart (WMT), reported solid earnings. However, this positive news for the retail sector was more or less offset by today’s inflation data which probably gives the Fed further justification for a rate hike. Outside of this, there were no other market moving data releases.

Stocks Rally In “Zero-Some Game” (Before I begin this evening’s commentary, I wish to send out prayerful thoughts and healing intentions to all of the victims and their families, friends and loved ones who were impacted by the terrorist attacks which occurred last weekend in Paris.) And now on to the daily market commentary… Equities […]

Commentary and Performance Summary Due to a conflict schedule, there will be no comments this evening. The SP-500 has now closed down 5 out of the last 6 trading sessions @ 2075.00 (-6.71 / -0.32%). The Nasdaq-100 finished the day @ 4636.94 (-4.79 / -0.10%) and the Rusell-2000 ended @ 1178.07 (-9.63 / -0.81%).

In Which Do You Believe: Stronger Dollar or Inflation Monster? The most recent US monthly employment report for non-farm payrolls was so strong that it looked like it was on steroids. Will the inflation monster inside of Yellen’s head or living under her bed be treated with an incremental interest rate hike in December? However, let […]

Commentary and Performance Today’s price action belies confusion. It looks like equities have adopted a “wait until December and see” approach when Chair Yellen makes a decision to hike or defer. At this juncture, it’s all data dependent and no one is going to try to second-guess the Fed unless we get some extreme anomalies […]

Commentary and Performance Technically, it was a negative day for equities. However, given the resiliency displayed by the market, I would consider it a positive trading session. Proximity to key price resistance levels and the less than dovish comments from Fed Chairperson Yellen who issued a sobriety test to the market by confirming the potential […]

Commentary and Performance Even though there was not much data to sway the markets, price action among the various asset classes was most noteworthy. For example, the long bond finally grabbed the 3-handle to send treasury rates back above 3%. Another oddity was the performance of the VIX, which easily outperformed equities despite their positive […]

Commentary and Performance Manufacturing within China’s economy may be slowing down, but this is not the case in North America or Europe where both regions have reported expansion in these components of their respective economies. Equities started the

Commentary and Performance End of the week converging with end of the month is an appropriate recipe for caution, especially when the market delivers one of its best monthly performances in quite some time. October bears appear to have already visited in September and August and hibernated early in October. Combine the above with the […]

Commentary and Performance For the first three hours of trading, stock prices were relatively unchanged until the bulls charged into an intraday breakout without retreating. The S&P 500 surpassed key price resistance at 2020 and closed @